In today's world of technology, companies can broadcast messages to volumes of subscribers in an automated way, yet in a way that is personalized. For example, many companies use an autoresponder series to allow subscribers to opt-in to a message sequence to receive free training and/or product offers that are being made by the company or its affiliates. If a company had to manually type up an email to send it to each subscriber, it would be time prohibitive. Autoresponders were created to automate this process of follow-up with subscribers by email.
To setup an autoresponder, an administrator simply creates one or messages that need to be sent to people who subscribe to it, and specify the schedule for when those messages should be sent. The autoresponder is then associated with one or more subscriber lists, so that when a customer or prospect opts-in to a particular subscriber list, they receive the messages that were specified in the autoresponder series.
As technology has continued to advance, people have also continued to evolve in the way in which they work and play. Many people use their mobile phone or other mobile device for checking email and/or surfing the internet. Some people like talking on the phone more than using email, while others love SMS text messages. There is another segment that still likes to use faxes too. Existing autoresponder systems rely on email as the primary method of communication, without taking these changing user preferences into consideration.